Damages - the New FX Show Starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson

I just saw the premier of the new F/X drama Damages starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson. The show isn't bad and starts off with a nice bang. A young, bloody, half-naked woman bursts out of an apartment building in Manhattan and is picked up by the police. It then begins to tell her story in a series of flashbacks. We learn the woman's name is Ellen and she is an up-and-coming attorney who was hired into a prestigious law firm. The head of the firm is Patty Hewes and as played by Glenn Close she is channeling the Merryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada. Patty Hewes is a vampire sucking business-woman who will stop at nothing to get her way. It's nice seeing a strong woman, but jeez, isn't the hard-driving corporate bitch getting a bit cliché?

Ted Danson plays Arthur Fobisher, a billionaire whose company folded, wiping out the retirement accounts of its employees. Hewes is suing Fobisher on behalf of its employees, alleging that he encouraged them to buy the stock even while he was selling it. This suit springs the plot of the movie. Hewes seems to have a personal vendetta against Fobisher and will go to no ends to manipulate the suit to her ends; Fobisher is just as devious. Stuck in the middle is first year attorney Ellen Parsons. She was recently hired by Hewes to help on the case, as we find out because she has a connection to a key witness. Ellen is the same woman who started the show emerging bloody and naked from her apartment.

The first episode ends by returning to the present as detectives search Ellen's apartment and find her fiancé bloody in the tub. Did she do it? Why? What made her do it? These are the questions which we're left with and which are supposed to get us to return.

The acting is good and the plot is interesting. I'll need another episode or two to decide if I'm hooked but if you like a mix of business with intrigue, with hard-ass business cliché characters, then it's worth a look.